Daniel Radcliffe might owe his acting career to J.K. Rowling, but that doesn’t mean he agrees with her lock, stock and barrel.
In fact, the former “Harry Potter” film series star doesn’t agree with the character’s creator on things like trans issues, and he even called out the author’s anti-trans opinions back in June 2020.
After Rowling attempted to define women based on menstruation, Radcliffe responded with an essay on the website of The Trevor Project, an organization that helps at-risk LGBTQ youth, in which he said that “transgender women are women.
Radcliffe explained to IndieWire earlier this week why he spoke out against Rowling’s anti-trans opinions.
“The reason I felt very, very much as though I needed to say something when I did was because, particularly since finishing ‘Potter,’” Radcliffe said, “I’ve met so many queer and trans kids and young people who had a huge amount of identification with Potter on that. And so seeing them hurt on that day I was like, I wanted them to know that not everybody in the franchise felt that way. And that was really important.”
Since Radcliffe has worked with The Trevor Project for more than 10 years, he said he didn’t think he would’ve been able to look in the mirror had he stayed silent.
“But it’s not mine to guess what’s going on in someone else’s head,” he said, possibly referring to why Rowling has engaged in anti-trans statements.
Radcliffe’s latest project is a little weirder ― literally. He is playing musician “Weird” Al Yankovic in a spoof bio-pic that will begin showing Friday on the Roku Channel.
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